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Hamilton sex workers share stories through photo exhibit

Posted: January 27, 2015

By Jon Wells

It’s just a picture of a pay phone. And yet the stark image has deeper and darker meaning to the sex trade worker who took it.

The pay phone on Barton Street East is one of 90 pictures being featured in a “PhotoVoice”exhibit Tuesday in the Sherman Hub, where seven women who have worked the streets share their stories through photography.

The story behind this one photo is that when pay phone services are cut at midnight to curtail the sex trade, the unintended consequence is that sex trade workers can’t use them to call 911 if faced with a crisis on the job late.

And so what the photo invokes for the one behind the lens is abandonment and danger.